This blog is about The Big Picture - information and insights about what goes on in the world outside our borders - and what it means for Americans. Unless otherwise specified, all photos from Deena Stryker archive.

Thursday, August 13, 2015

Scandinavia Joins the Crowd

For weeks now the foreign news has been following the immigrant drama playing out between France and Great Britain, as refugees from the Middle East and Africa try to stow away on trucks crossing the English Channel.Before making it to Calais, many camp in pup tents in various locations in Paris, formerly known as The City of Light.But England and France are not the only countries being up-ended by uncontrollable immigration, and the tidal wave fleeing US and European-led violence in their home countries has boosted the popularity of far-right groups across the continent, with Germany’s Pegida as the most vociferous.

A couple of years ago a Norwegian fascist killed almost a hundred young socialists in a youth camp near Oslo, becoming the first anti-immigrant Scandinavian to reach the public eye. But as RT recently reported, http://www.rt.com/search/?q=Malmo+violence the Swedish city of Malmo has been the scene of repeated anti-immigrant crimes. While violence is ubiquitous all over the world, it is difficult to imagine it in Scandinavia, seen for decades as an almost perfect place.

Not to mention the Nordic countries’ well-known commitment to the developing world, going back decades to the time when it was known as the ‘Third’ world. What has happened to transform the Scandinavian paradise, whose welfare system inspired that of the entire EU, into a place just like any other, where the presence of dark folk gives rise to shootings and car burnings? According to RT, the Malmo police are running out of space to store confiscated weapons, and there have been 68 shootings so far in 2015. As one youth put it: “Hand grenades grow on trees.” Others claim that whites are becoming a minority.

Few Americans know just how far the Nordic countries have carried their commitment to universal human rights, consistently being in the forefront of NGO’s helping desperately poor developing countries, as shown in many documentaries and news reports over the years. It seems Scandinavians are discovering that it is one thing to travel to underprivileged areas of the globe to lend a helping hand, and another to stand next to under-privileged immigrants in their supermarket checkout - or see their children sitting next to them in school.

In other words, Scandinavians at home turn out to be just as racist as any other white folk - or maybe it’s just the lesser educated. Whatever the explanation, it is certain that we are witnessing a sea change in the attitudes of the most ‘enlightened’ members of the world’s minority - its Caucasians - toward its majority: people of color.

Hitherto, white people have dominated a world that is, in fact, the color of honey in all its varieties, as I write in America Revealed to a Honey-Colored World. The growing stream of economic migrants from Africa and the Middle East shows that many are not willing to wait until peace and prosperity come to their countries: informed by the internet about how the rich world lives, they are risking their lives to achieve the same living standards.

When the European powers were colonizing Africa in the nineteenth century, they never dreamed their actions would come to haunt their descendants. The power of the white world seemed to rule out the possibility of the black and brown worlds ever rebelling. Even during the decolonization period that followed World War II, who could have imagined that a failure to assist newly independent countries to develop, enlisting their upper classes instead to pillage their resources, would result in pristine-white Europe being subjected to a reverse invasion by dark-skinned peoples, most of whom are not ‘even’ Christians, but Muslims.

Not since the Ottoman invasion of Eastern Europe has Christianity been threatened in its bastions. The Caliphate occupied those lands for four hundred years, setting them up to be far less developed than Western Europe. The Turkish onslaught was halted in 1526 at battle of Mohacs, and Hungarians are quick to point out what the West owes them for stopping the Ottoman penetration of Habsburg lands before they reached Vienna.

At the Western end of Europe, the Muslims conquered Spain in the eighth century, remaining there until Columbus discovered America in 1492, and although tourists admire the monuments they left behind, until the twenty-first century, most Europeans never dreamt they could become a minority in their own lands. Of course, that is not yet the case, but far right parties have been protesting, some, like France’s National Front, for decades, originally against government encouragement of immigration to meet manpower needs.

The National Front got it right: Europe will gradually be Islamized: but it is wrong to claim that this transformation can be avoided: numbers are incontrovertible. In 2014, the population of Africa was 1.2 billion. That of the European Union was 507 million, less than half. And it’s not a question of space: the EU counts 1.67 million square miles while that of Africa has 11.67 million square miles. Africa has more than double the population of Europe, but it is six times larger.

Not only: according to Wikipedia, “Africa has a large quantity of natural resources including diamonds, salt, gold, iron, cobalt, uranium, copper, bauxite, silver, petroleum and cocoa beans, woods and tropical fruits” - and oil,” so it would be difficult to make the case that African emigration is due to natural causes.

As for the Middle East, Western intervention has made it the most violent part of the world, sending thousands fleeing for their lives from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, straining the resources of neighboring countries. Europe is the logical place for them to go, and most immigrants believe they will not be welcomed with open arms because of the Union’s commitment to human rights. Recently, one Syria refugee having reached the Greek island of Kos, near Turkey, declared to France 24: “In my own country I am not a human being. Here I am a human being.” The following day, one of his countrymen stood in the same place shouting: “Why are we being kept locked in a stadium with neither food nor water? Why? Why?”

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Welcome to Otherjones!

The alternative press is replete with despair and ‘hope’, neither of which is helpful. ‘Squawking’ may alleviate some of the pain Americans experience at being identified with a government that brutalizes Others at will, but it doesn’t change the ‘facts on the ground’. As for hope, it is an easy cop-out: in the present state of the world, we can never be certain that tomorrow will come. Whether a barefoot child in Africa or a hedge-fund manager, all of us are the potential victims of hubris.

This blog aims to prepare my readers in ways more important than stockpiling food and bandages for whatever happens, as we transition from an American century to a world century, helping them see through the web of lies with which we are being controlled.

Having lived for years at a time in half a dozen ‘foreign’, countries — learning their languages and histories — I have a unique ability to identify events that bear watching. That life, however, could not provide ‘retirement benefits’, so if you appreciate the unique combination of information and insight that characterizes my work, I hope you will integrate a small donation to Otherjones into your budget.

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If You Had Been Watching....

One of the worst aspects of the US media landscape is its neglect of what goes on in the rest of the world. When I returned from nineteen years of living in France, where I sometimes watched CNN’s excellent coverage of world events, I was surprised that in the US, CNN offered nothing comparable. I called the main editorial office in New York and was told ’Americans aren’t interested in foreign affairs’, revealing one one the reasons why the US government gets away with wreaking havoc around the world: Americans have no information that would prompt them to protest their county’s actions abroad.

The fact is that several countries’ governments — aside from the British — fund international television channels. These include France 24, NHK (Japan) , Al-Jazeera (Qatar) RT (Russia) and Telesur (Latin America). These channels usually broadcast in English, Spanish and Arabic, using native speakers, enabling most people in most parts of the world to hear news that their national outlets do not cover and get a broad window onto the world.

Meanwhile, Americans are told that the channel that is most significant for them, RT, is propaganda!

RT is significant not only because, like the other foreign channels it offers a wide range of programs but because it includes opinions from many well-known Americans who are barred from our own mainstream media.

From time to time I will signal significant news stories covered by these foreign channels that are absent from our own.